John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

RECORDED CONVERSATIONS. 191
we were entering St. James s Square, that Carlyle was de
nouncing our religion and all its accessories. Mill struck in
with the remark
"
Now, you are just the very man to tell the
public your whole mind upon that subject ".
This
was net
exactly what Carlyle fancied. He gave, with his peculiar
grunt, the exclamation
"
Ho," and added,
"
it is some one
like Frederick the Great that should do that ".
The recently published "Journals of Caroline Fox" gives
some very interesting pictures of Mill s conversations and ways,
as he appeared between 1840 and 1846. His opinions about
things in general in those years, so far as shown to the Falmouth
circle, are very fairly set forth. The thing wanting to
do full justice to his conversation is to present it in dialogue, so
as to show how he could give and take with his fellow-talkers.
A well-reported colloquy between him and Sterling would be
very much to the purpose. He appears to great advantage in
the way that he accommodated himself to the kind Foxes, on
the occasion of staying at Falmouth during Henry s last illness.
The letter to Barclay Fox, which I have referred to above
(p. 61), is given at length. A remark of Sterling s is quoted,
which corroborates what I have already said as to Mill s want
of concreteness :
"
Mill has singularly little sense of the con
crete, and, though possessing deep feeling, has little poetry ".
He had, it seems to rne, the sense and the feeling, but not the
power of expression, or of concrete embodiment in language
which is the distinctive mark of the poetic genius. He was
born to read, and not to write, poetry.
A few lines on Mill s influence, past, present, and future,
will bring our sketch to a close. Not that the topic has been
left hitherto untouched; but that an express
serve to bring up a few novel illustrations.
reference will
It is not for the opportunity of contradicting former opinions
respecting him, but because the polemic and criticism of others
are often more suggestive than mere exposition, that I quote